Brian Atwater, a U.S. Geological Survey scientist based at the University of Washington, will speak in Longview on Wednesday evening, February 27, on "Clues to the giant Cascadia earthquake of January 1700." The talk will take place from 7 to 8 p.m. in the science auditorium, HSB 101, at Lower Columbia College.

Dr. Atwater’s discoveries contributed to scientific consensus that the Pacific Northwest has a geological history of earthquakes as large as magnitude 9. His presentation will focus on the most recent of these. He will also present evidence that at our latitude, the earthquakes have occurred at intervals ranging from a few centuries to a millennium, with an average of about 500 years.

This is a free public program sponsored by the Willapa Hills Audubon Society, the volunteer conservation group serving Cowlitz, Wahkiakum and Pacific counties in southwest Washington and Columbia County in Oregon. For more information call Darrel Whipple at 503-556-9838.

Come see raptors, waterfowl, and maybe nesting owls at Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge on the Puget Sound near Olympia. Meet Saturday Feb. 23, 2018, at the headquarters’ entrance between 9:15 and 9:30 for a 3 - 4 hour tour, depending on weather.

Dress for the weather and bring your snacks.

To sign up, call John Green (360-430-8569) or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Group size is limited, only a few spots left!

Distance to the entrance of the Nisqually NWR is 77 miles from Longview and carpooling is encouraged.

As usual we jump started our year with a nice list of species from the Cowlitz/Columbia Christmas Bird Count on New Year's Day.

Our most unusual finds occurred in the Woodland Bottoms, starting with our fifth record of Brant on 1/4/19. This goose spends the winter eating eel grass in Willapa Bay and other coastal areas and rarely ventures this far inland.

Even more exciting was Cowlitz's third record of Palm Warbler found on 1/28/19 and still present at the end of the month. It had been seen by a number of birders. A species that breeds in boggy areas of Canada and very northeast U.S. east of the Rockies spends its winters in the southeast U.S. and the West Indies. A much smaller number winter annually from western California up into coastal Washington with numbers decreasing as you go north.

This winter there has been a much greater influx of this species into Washington as well as some a little farther inland, and our bird is a part of that phenomenon.

The Cowlitz County Bird List is maintained by Russ Koppendrayer. Here is his take on 2018:

I believe this was the first time in the history of this project that we added NO new species in the final two month period. Never the less we had a very nice year breaking through the 200 barrier again with 201 species.

Three of those species were seen in the county for the first time ever. They were as follows: A Broad-winged Hawk was seen by an experienced hawk watcher who happened to be counting migrating Turkey Vultures in September at the Woodland Bottoms. A flock of Common Redpolls at a west Longview park in January that were part of a massive irruption of this species in all of Washington during the winter of '17-'18. Also a Dickcissel made a stop at a bird bath north of Kelso in early June and was photographed by the owner.

The only species that was a big miss was Dunlin, a shorebird that can over winter here in small numbers, and if we miss them then we find them in spring migration. Not this year for whatever reason. On to a new year of exciting birding in Cowlitz County to see what it has to offer.

As of now any young birder in school will be able to download the new version 7.7 of Thayer’s Birds of North America at NO COST. All others still need to buy the regular version. Thayer Birding Software founder, Peter W. Thayer, decided that this would be the perfect way to celebrate his 70th birthday.

You can get the software by using a Young Birder code, in our case use WillapaHillsAudubonYoungBirderwhere it asks for the promo code. Though be warned: The software package is huge, about 7.5GB and it will take a while to download depending on your internet connection.

We added three species to our Cowlitz year list in the last two months, (Surf Scoter, Pectoral Sandpiper, and Pacific Loon) all of them being code 4. These codes are a way of determining the likelihood of finding a particular species and relate to the color of the square in the column immediately after the species name in the attached list.

Code 1 - Blue - You should find this species in appropriate habitat at the correct time of year.

Code 2 - Green - More difficult to find, but should be found in appropriate habitat in correct season with some effort.

Code 3 - Yellow - Recorded in the county annually, but you may or may not find one personally even with great effort.

Code 4 - Orange - Five or more records of the species in the county, but does not occur every year.

Code 5 - Red - At least one, but less than five records within the county.

White - This species occurs on the Washington list, but has never been recorded in Cowlitz County.

Lets hope this makes the list more meaningful to some and one purpose of this project is to update these codes occasionally, usually in early January.

To obtain a checklist of the birds found in any county in Washington with the code numbers go to wabirder.com and click on checklists on the left side of the page. There you scroll to the bottom of the page and click on the desired county on the map and get a list that you can print out.

The RDEIS (Revised Draft Environmental Impact Statement) has been released. The public comment period began on September 7th and will end November 6th. This is the last time for public comment on this fifty-year plan to protect the Marbled Murrelet and the state-owned forests in SW Washington that it breeds in.

The current timeline for completion of the Long Term Conservation Strategy is for Washington State agencies and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to review the public comments and consider any new research before issuing a final EIS in about September 2019. At that point, the Washington Board of Natural Resources will vote to approve or disapprove the final plan.

For background information on this plan to protect the Marbled Murrelet, see Maria Ruth’s article here.

For help in writing your comments, we'll provide much more information in the coming weeks. Stay tuned to the WHAS website, or you can go to this Facebook page for posts from the Marbled Murrelet Survival Project.

Your voice counts! Save this endangered species and protect your public lands.

As usual we did not find many new species for the year in the July/August segment. The most unusual one was the third record for the county of Pine Grosbeak, found near Goat Marsh Lake on the southwest shoulders of Mt. St. Helens. Typically found farther north and closer to the Cascade crest, this was the second time this species showed up in this area in the fall, with the third sighting being being in winter west of Coldwater Lake in the middle of winter.

The other new species added was Semipalmated Sandpiper. This species has an interesting migration pattern in that it is extremely rare in Washington in the spring by going north through the eastern half of the continent. However, in fall we get small numbers coming through our state and find them in Cowlitz County in most years.

Also added were a couple species that were reported on eBird earlier in the year that had somehow been missed.